“Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Sweetheart!”
Calleth the meadow-lark
Thro’ the rose of dawn to me
Dreaming beside the sea;
Oh, listen—oh, hark!
How joyously, liquidly clear
Over the meadows I hear—
“Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Sweetheart!”
And I think of my dearest across the sea,
The blue, blue sea that holds us apart;
It is his own voice that calls to me,
In the voice of the lark—
“Sweetheart, Sweetheart!”
“Sadheart, Sadheart, Sadheart!”
Calleth the meadow-lark
Thro’ the gray of dawn to me
Grieving beside the sea;
Oh, listen—Oh, hark!
How tenderly, mournfully clear
Over the meadows I hear—
“Sadheart, Sadheart, Sadheart!”
And I think of my dearest beneath the sea,
The sea that holds us forever apart;
It is his own voice that calls to me
In the voice of the lark—
“Sadheart, Sadheart!”
“The Sailor’s Sweetheart” as it appears in Higginson’s The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).
“The Sailor’s Sweetheart” printed the Seattle Times newspaper, November 1, 1903, in Higginson’s literary column “Clover Leaves.” Clipping courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham Washington.